


Heartswings

by AGoatAteMyNameTag



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Breaking Up & Making Up, Denial of Feelings, F/M, One Shot, Pepper Potts Has Issues, Pining, Sobriety/Recovery, Tony Stark Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:13:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23825116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AGoatAteMyNameTag/pseuds/AGoatAteMyNameTag
Summary: Leave, leave, leave!Her mind screamed at her, the beginnings of panic seeping into her veins.Get out while you still can! You can have a normal life. One without blood and state secrets and your heart flying around in a surprisingly fragile titanium gold alloy suit.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 5
Kudos: 36





	Heartswings

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this in 2010. And to this day "The Heinrich Maneuver" by Interpol still remains my most played song ever in my music library because of how many times I played it on loop while writing this.

* * *

_Well, I've got a chance for a sweet, sane life  
Said I've got a dance  
_ _It moves into the night  
Well, I've got a plan with forward in my eyes  
_

_But today, my heart swings_

“The Heinrich Maneuver” -- Interpol

* * *

He would like to say that he was able to tell it was her solely by her shoes.

In reality though, he noticed her hair first, fiery red, and then, like always, his eyes dropped down to her shoes. Because he totally did not check the shoes of every red head he saw to see if she was wearing ridiculously expensive shoes with impossibly thin heels underneath them. That would just be sad. It had been 2 years after all.

He was totally over her.  
  
If he remembered his women's shoe brands correctly, she was wearing Christian Dior. They were sinfully black, elegantly crafted and costing well over $500. No one wore $500 dollar Christian Dior shoes to go drinking at a music club in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. And especially no one wore Christian Dior shoes with $40 jeans.  
  
No one but Pepper that was.  
  
He made his way through the crowd and took the place next to her at the bar. She was staring into the bottom of her martini glass and had yet to notice him. “Come here often?”  
  
She looked as if she was about to blow him off, but then her eyes widened as she recognized who he was. “Tony?”  
  
“In the flesh,” he smiled.  
  
“What are you doing here?” she asked, slight smile playing at her lips. Good, she wasn't totally put off by his presence.  
  
He shrugged one shoulder. “Groundbreaking ceremony on my new office building. In about 2 years there's going to be a 93-story eyesore in west mid-town named Stark Tower.”  
  
Pepper smiled fully, knowing that whatever designs Tony had come up with had all been called 'eyesores' (and much worse) by every architect he consulted with. “93?” she repeated, thinking it to be an odd number. “Let me guess, you wanted to go bigger, but they wouldn't let you build bigger than One World Trade Center?”  
  
“I don't see how my designs were any more 'terrorist tempting' than the monstrosity they've got up there now. And mine came with a free anti-terrorist defense system!”  
  
Pepper snorted into her drink before finishing it.  
  
“Can I buy you your drink?”  
  
Pepper raised an eyebrow. “I don't know, are you going to drink most of it under the guise of a 'toll sip'? And then use that as an excuse to keep buying drinks for me that you end up drinking?”  
  
“Nope, can't,” Tony replied, reaching into the breast pocket of his blazer and pulling out his wallet. “I am one year, nine weeks and three days sober. I even got the little coin they gave me to prove it.” From his wallet, he pulled a brass coin, about the same size as a poker chip. Embossed on it was a triangle, within the triangle was a circle and within the circle was the Roman numeral I. Pepper had spent enough time in college-town dive bars with AA coins pinned to the walls in her misspent undergraduate years to know that it wasn't a fake.  
  
She handed the medallion back to him. “So what are you doing here in a bar? I thought it was against AA rules or something?”  
  
“It's not a rule and I'm not here for the booze,” he said, matter-of-factly, as he put the coin away.  
  
“So then what are you here for?”  
  
“This is the Mercury Lounge, right? One of the best places to see live music in New York City?”  
  
The band started setting up not long after that. Tony bought Pepper another drink and didn't even touch it, not even to hand it to her. At about ten, the music began, bodies crushed together and everything became a blur of music, movement and heat. They danced, managed to some how catch up over the screaming guitars and thumping bass drum. Somewhere in the second encore, their lips met. It was in this moment that Tony learned that he was _not_ over her because he couldn't pull away even if he wanted to, even for something silly like breathing.  
  
Thankfully Pepper seemed to at least be going along with it.  
  
Very enthusiastically going along with it. In fact, as they made out in a relatively deserted subway car that Tony had no idea where it was going, he began to get the feeling that maybe Pepper wasn't just going along with the whole her-tongue-in-his-mouth, his-hands-on-her-ass thing. Maybe she was actually enjoying it. Maybe she actually wanted to do this.  
  
_Why now?_ and _Since when?_ were the two thoughts that were able to make it through the lusty fog enshrouding his brain as he watched Pepper's backside climb the steps out of the subway and back into the surface world.  
  
Christ, those shoes really did work wonders for her ass. Maybe he could persuade the architect meet with him for another re-design session. One that involved making his building have the same graceful lines and curves of Pepper's legs, butt and waist.  
  
The street was lit by yellow streetlamps spaced between huge leafy green trees. Cars lined both sides of the streets along with New York's signature brownstones.  
  
“So, uh, not that I don't mind following leggy redheads into parts of the city that I've never been to, but where are we?”  
  
“Brooklyn Heights. Don't worry, Manhattan is just across the river.”  
  
“Awesome. I mean, I figured this probably wasn't Marcy Projects, but I just wanted to be sure.”  
  
Pepper turned to look at him. “How do you know about Marcy Projects and that it's a place that you wouldn't want to be at night?”  
  
“Jay-Z likes to show up at my parties whenever he's out on the west coast. I only let him in because it seems to make everyone else happy. He keeps bugging me about making a song about Iron Man. I keep telling him no.”  
  
Pepper laughed, making her way up the steps of an absolutely gorgeous brownstone and pulling out a set of keys from her pocket.  
  
“Uh, where are we going?” Tony asked, staying at the bottom of the steps.  
  
“This is my house.” Pepper unlocked the door and turned back to him. “Aren't you coming in?”  
  


* * *

Two years ago she left Tony Stark. Romantically, professionally, physically, in every sense of the word.  
  
There was a massive blowout between them, she wasn't even sure if Tony remembered it. He had been _that_ drunk and had been for about the past week at the time.  
  
She had put her foot down. She'd decided she couldn't take it any more. It was her or the booze.  
  
Tony, in decidedly colorful words that are best not repeated, chose the booze.  
  
By the next morning, all of her things had been moved into a hotel room at the nearest Holiday Inn. After a day of packing or getting rid of things, she was on a plane to New York City. The following Monday she e-mailed Tony her resignation, threw her Blackberry into the Hudson river, deleted all her e-mail addresses (both personal and professional) and did everything short of changing her name to deter him from coming after her.  
  
Either it worked or Tony had just been that far gone.  
  
She told herself that it worked in order to keep away the guilt of having left him in such a deep hole if it was the latter.  
  
Pepper started over. Dyed her hair brown for a while. Adopted a puppy. Decided she liked her natural color better. Got a job as business consultant. Met someone new. Broke up with them. Dabbled in modeling. Had a few one night stands. Got mugged on the subway by a 14 year old. Had to give way the puppy to someone who had a backyard. Met someone else and broke up with them. Took a ceramics class.  
  
Anything to move on from her past life in California.  
  
And yet, after only having him back in her life for maybe 8 hours at the most, he was next to her in her bed, naked and sleeping off some amazing sex.  
  
She should leave. Go out for the day, go running in Central Park, buy herself a new pair of shoes, get coffee with a friend and not come back here until the sun was going down. Give Tony enough time to get the message that last night was a mistake. That he had seduced her and that it had only worked because she was drunk.  
  
But with him here next to her, arc reactor casting her bedroom in a faint blue glow, the loneliness that had never seemed to completely go away was finally gone. She no longer felt like a loose thread hanging out in the wind.  
  
Pepper sat up in bed and looked down at his sleeping form. _If I stay, where is this going to go?_ She thought out the possibilities. He would wake up, smirk at her, flirt with her, and there was a good possibility they would have sex again. He would plead with her to go back to Malibu with him, promise they could start over again. If she said no, he would pester her with e-mails, phone calls and text messages until she decided to take a “vacation” out there and end up not coming back. Saying yes would seem to cut out a frivolous round of hard to get.  
  
But what about the first party they would go to as a public couple? What about when he inevitably fell off the wagon again? (Which would happen. It was extremely commendable that Tony had lasted a year with sobriety already, but it was still his first go at it. She knew the odds were staggeringly against him.) Could she put herself through that again? Find him in the bathroom passed out in his own vomit again? Stand there and try to not be hurt by the drunken rants and rages? Not flinch when yet another antique vase shattered against the wall?  
  
She got out of bed and dressed in her usual running clothes in record time.

  
  
After she went for morning runs in Central Park, Pepper liked to stop at one of the food trucks set up by the Merchant's Gate entrance when she was sufficiently warmed-down enough to not look like a sloppy, sweaty mess sitting at one of the small, green, metal tables. Upon taking her first bite of her PowerBar, she realized that she was almost literally across the street from where Tony's “93-story eyesore” would be in about two years. She tried to imagine what it would look like, yet another skyscraper poking into the sky over the trees of Central Park.  
  
_Knowing Tony, it'll probably be as ostentatious and gaudy as possible. 'I need it to stand out; how else will I be able to find it coming down from sub-orbital flight?'._  
  
Pepper snorted to herself, mind supplying even more reasons that Tony would come up with for the probably outlandish design of his building. After taking a swig of water, she checked the time on her iPhone, deciding that she better start waking to the subway if she wanted to catch the next train that would take her to her friend Maria's house.  
  
On her walk to the subway, she passed by many newsstands. It wasn't until she had to throw away the wrapper to her PowerBar that her attention was caught. The owner of the newsstand was putting out copies of an entertainment supplement of the New York Daily News by foot-thick stacks. Idly glancing at the cover, Pepper felt her throat go dry.  
  
Her. Tony. Lips locked. His hand? On her ass. Her arms? Around his neck.  
  
The headline screamed out at her from the page: “TOGETHER AGAIN?: Temperatures skyrocket at the Mercury as Tony Stark and his former assistant, Pepper Potts, heat things up!”  
  
The irrational thought to buy out the entire newsstand flashed through her mind briefly before dying. One, she didn't have enough money to do so (she left her credit cards at home) and two, the transit police would probably think she was trying to hock them on the subway. Not to mention that there was probably 10 other newsstands within a block of where she was standing.  
  
So instead, she bought one copy and changed her plans to head back home instead.

“Was this your plan all along?” She shouted upon seeing him still in her house, throwing the paper at him. Tony, unprepared, awkwardly caught it while trying not to spill the coffee he had apparently made for himself while she was out.  
  
“Good morning to you too sweetheart,” he muttered under his breath as he semi-organized the paper on the coffee table in front of him. He sighed when he saw the headline. “Shit.”  
  
“What is this? Some kind of sick revenge?”  
  
Tony's eyebrows shot up on his head. “Um, it's called being a multi-billionaire who has paparazzi follow him fucking every where despite his best efforts to blend in!”  
  
“Loosening your tie before going into the Mercury Lounge does not count as trying to blend in!”  
  
“Alright, alright,” Tony conceded, “but, I swear I didn't see any of them when I went in, while we were in there or when we were leaving. In fact...” Tony trailed off, tilting his head at the photo that took up the front page. “Yeah, this as definitely taken with someone's phone.”  
  
“Damn it, Tony!” Pepper cried, pressing her fingertips into her forehead. “What were you thinking?”  
  
“Hey!” Tony said in an accusatory tone, getting up to get his jacket from last night and digging around in the pockets. “You could have gotten up and left at any time. I didn’t force you into any of this. In fact, I seem to remember it was you who started playing grab-ass about three songs into the set.”  
  
Pepper scowled and folded her arms across her chest. He was right; two vodka martinis with extra olives didn’t cloud her judgment that much. They had just made it easier to ignore the small voice in the back of her mind saying ‘this is a mistake!’  
  
“Who are you calling?” She asked as he pulled his phone out of one of the pockets in his jacket.  
  
“Legal. If I promise them triple their overtime pay and a few extra days off around the religious holiday of their choosing, I'm pretty sure this'll all be retracted before the evening issue even comes out.”  
  
She took a seat on the other end of the couch from where he had been sitting and watched him as he paced around the room, explaining what the situation was to whoever was on the other end, haggling over deadlines and incentives. A few minutes later he hung up and turned to her with a smile on his face. “Congratulations, you now own a collector's item.”  
  
Pepper sighed and rubbed at her eyes. After a moment, a strange sort of smile appeared on her face. “You know, if things had gone to plan and I had come back in the evening and you were still here, I was going to have my friend Maria come over and scare you off.”  
  
“Oh yeah? And what exactly is it about Maria that would scare me off?”  
  
“She works in private security or something. We met after I got mugged on the subway by this kid who couldn’t have been more than 14. She kept him from doing more than just roughing me up a little bit.”  
  
“Uh, Pep, just curious here, but what is Maria’s last name?”  
  
“Hill. Why?”  
  
Tony burst out laughing. Pepper frowned. “What? Why is that funny? …Tony, stop laughing.”  
  
“Maria does not work in private security.” Tony said, sobering up. “She works for the government. S.H.I.E.L.D. to be specific.”  
  
Pepper’s face fell. “Oh God, you’re not sleeping with her, are you?”  
  
A snort of derision escaped Tony. “No.” He shook his head. “God, no.” His eyes locked on hers. “Pepper, she’s your…bodyguard I guess is the best word for it.”  
  
“Bodyguard?” Pepper repeated, looking somewhere between concerned and panicked. “Why? Why do I have a bodyguard? Am I in danger?”  
  
“No, you’re not.” He assured her. “But you could be. Should anything happen to you because of your ties to me, I’m not sure I can be held responsible for my actions.”  
  
Pepper frowned, still not satisfied.  
  
“It’s purely preventative. There haven’t been any threats made against you. Except for that kid on the subway. But Coulson—you remember Agent Coulson, right?—checked him out and it turns out he’s just your run of the mill bored teenager.”  
  
“…So you have a highly trained government agent tailing my every move—”  
  
“—not every move, a lot of it is done remotely—”  
  
“—tailing me for no reason other than you want to protect me from what might happen? That can’t be cheap, Tony. And what if some reporter got a hold of information like that? I can’t even begin to imagine how many stories on ‘wasteful government spending’ that would spawn.”  
  
“First, it is worth every single favor Hill gets to lord over me until the end of time. You’re still very important to me. Even if you weren’t the most important person in my life, you still hold a lot of Stark Industries’ secrets in your head. And that by extension means you have a lot of government secrets in your head. I didn’t exactly have to try very hard to persuade Nick Fury to keep tabs on you after you and I went our separate ways.”  
  
Pepper put her head into her hands. “Oh my God,” she muttered. “Oh my God,” she looked up and let out a short snort of sarcastic laughter. “I’m on the other side of the continent and I _still_ can’t get away from you!”  
  
“Yeah, about that…” Tony got up from the couch and crossed to the window, his back to her, and took a deep breath. If Pepper had to guess, it looked like he was gathering his resolve for something. But for what, Pepper had no idea. And that made her a little bit worried.  
  
Finally, he turned to face her. “Look, the ground breaking in midtown is only part of the reason I'm here. Part of AA requires that I make amends to everyone that I've hurt or wronged while I was a drunken selfish bastard. You're the last person and I saved you for last Pepper because I think I have the most to apologize for with you.”  
  
Pepper blinked. “Tony...”  
  
“Hear me out. I've rehearsed this in my head for a month now and I'd really appreciate it if you just let me get it all out before saying anything.” She stayed silent and, taking that as assent for him to continue, Tony took a deep breath. “Pepper... _Virginia_ Potts, I am so very sorry for everything I have put you through. I am sorry you had to put up with drunken advances from me. I am sorry that you had to make countless excuses on my behalf for my behavior. I'm sorry I let you make those excuses for me. I am sorry for all the Monday mornings you came in to work and found yourself playing nurse instead of personal assistant. I'm sorry that you started to come prepared to play nurse on Monday, or whatever day of the week it happened to be. I'm sorry for all the times you thought you were going to find me dead of asphyxiation in my bathroom. I'm sorry for the fights. I'm sorry for the yelling. I'm sorry I threw things around you.” Tony licked his lips and swallowed, looking her dead in the eyes. “But most of all, I am sorry for all the times I made you feel fear, whether it was for myself or yourself. I'm sorry for any pain I've caused you. I'm sorry I've hurt you.”  
  
Pepper sat for a long moment, stunned, trying to absorb everything Tony had just said. It was a spectacular admission of wrongdoing that she could have only dreamed of up until this point. It touched on nearly every single thing that had driven her away. Her past self would have been overwhelmed by it all. Clearly Tony had spent a long time devoting a considerable amount of brainpower towards this, which was an absolutely massive statement in and of itself.  
  
But there was just one thing….  
  
“Wow, um, God, Tony…” Pepper tucked a loose lock of hair behind one ear. “That was…not what I was expecting. Uh, thank you. I appreciate you coming all this way to—”  
  
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re not accepting.”  
  
“Well, no. Because I have a question.”  
  
Tony folded his arms and leaned back against the wall. “Shoot.”

“Have you slept with everyone else you needed to apologize to? Did you seduce me last night in hopes of buttering me up? Because you are right in assuming that you do have the most to apologize for with me. And it would be a very ‘Tony Stark’ thing to do, to sleep with me in hopes of softening me up so I don’t come after you with a baseball bat when you remind me of all the shit you put me through that made me run away to the other side of the continent.”  
  
Tony’s head dropped back for a minute and let out a long, aggravated sounding sigh.  
  
“Pepper,” he said, head dropping back down to fix her with a hard stare. “I didn't _do_ anything last night. I didn't put any moves on you or suggest going back to your place. I wanted to tell you this last night, in a public place, in case you've developed a vengeful streak over the past two years. Believe me, I know I've given you plenty of reason to. But this...this just kind of happened.”  
  
“Things like this do not just happen. If you solely intended on apologizing to me and nothing else, you would have pushed me away even if I had draped my naked self all over you in public.”  
  
“Oh bullshit, you know I would not push you away in a million years if you did that.”  
  
“My point still stands. If you didn’t want to have sex with me, you wouldn’t have.”  
  
“Whether I intended to sleep with you and whether I want to have sex with you are two different things. Of course I want to have sex with you. I always want to have sex with you because I still love you!”  
  
A heavy, painful silence filled the room suddenly, taking all the air out of it. It left no room to move, no room to breathe.  
  
“Tony…” Pepper started, but stopped herself. “Maybe you should—”  
  
“I get it. I’m going,” he said, grabbing his jacket again and shrugging it on.  
  
She walked him to the door.  
  
“Look,” he said, turning around to face her once he was through the door. “I really am sorry and I really came out here with nothing but the best of intentions. I know you don’t believe me, but when you’re deciding whether or not to buy my story, just keep in mind the first time you found me getting out of the suit and what I said then. The serious thing, not the funny—”  
  
“Yes, I know.”  
  
“And just keep in mind the type of person I am and the kinds of things that have happened to me since then. I didn’t change for you, and I didn’t change for anyone or anything else. I did it for me because what I said that night is still true.”  
  
Pepper folded her arms against herself and leaned against the doorjamb. “Alright, I’ll try.”  
  
He smiled. “Thanks.”  
  
He turned and started down the steps before stopping and turning back around. “Oh and if you’re ever in Malibu again and need a place to stay or something to do, you’re always welcome at my place. No strings or anything.”  
  
“Goodbye Tony.”

* * *

  
  
A few weeks later, while drinking coffee on a late Saturday morning, Pepper forgave him. What Tony had said had been stewing in the back of her mind over the weeks, causing her to subconsciously keep tabs on him via the media. She thought about that night she found him for the first time having the suit disassembled around him, the almost crazed look in his eye when he told here there was nothing, nothing but the next mission.  
  
But Tony Stark could never just do one thing, no matter how all-consuming that one thing may be. So he kept up with his company and he kept up with his drinking that he had been developing into alcoholism over the years. The former because he was genuinely interested in it despite outward appearances and the latter because he physically couldn’t. Pepper had assumed that he cut out the girls initially due to vanity issues created by the chest piece and then kept them out because he was finally not-bored enough to pursue meaningless sex with them. And then he was with her and while Tony Stark may be many things, none of them were a cheater.  
  
She decided to wait a week and see if her forgiveness of his sins was real or just a temporary bout of insanity.  
  
The workweek passed without incident and the following Saturday morning found her awake earlier than usual for a weekend. She did her yoga routine, ate a particularly healthy breakfast then showered and tried her best not to dress like she was preparing for a high stakes phone interview with a multinational company. She only partly succeeded and ended up looking like she was going into the office on a casual Friday and trying to persuade one of her co-workers into an office romance.  
  
“This is a pleasant surprise at….7 am on a Saturday.” Tony greeted her, voice raspy with sleep, when he finally picked up the phone.  
  
“I didn’t wake you, did I?” Pepper replied, fully aware of the time zone difference between New York and L.A.  
  
“No,” he answered, clearly lying. “I was just…know what, fuck it. I was. I just got in two hours ago after stopping some Stark Industries weapons from getting into Georgia. The country near Russia, not the state with the peaches.”  
  
“I can—”  
  
“No, no. I would much rather talk to you than sleep right now. Really. I mean that.” Tony said. “So, to what do I owe this auspicious occasion?”  
  
“It’s really not—”  
  
“Yes it is, otherwise you wouldn’t have called me this early. I know you haven’t forgotten how time zones work.”  
  
It took a few moments for the words to finally bubble up from the pit of her stomach. And even after that, her tongue was lazy and heavy in her mouth. But they finally did come. “I forgive you.”  
  
There was another stretch of silence before she heard Tony mutter ‘Jesus’ on the other end. “Tony—?”  
  
“I’m ok. I just—wasn’t expecting that this early in the morning.” Tony exhaled harshly. “Really, Pepper, you have no idea what this means. Thank you.”  
  
Another silence stretched out between them, this time a bit more comfortably. Pepper felt like she should say something, any one of the myriad of thoughts racing through her head, but found that she couldn't. As if there was some mental barrier keeping her from having casual, meaningless conversation with Tony Stark. Finally, one thing did work its way past the barrier and out of her mouth. “If you’re ever in New York and—”  
  
“Pepper, you know I’ll never be in need of a place to stay in New York.”  
  
Pepper closed her eyes in an effort to stave off the wave of self-conscious embarrassment at her offer. Of all the things she could have said to him, things of importance, like apologizing for her part in taking advantage of him (because she had been a little bit drunk and Tony had been about as desperate for someone as Tony Stark can get and her drunk self had still been able to read that in the lines of his body even after two years of separation, even if he hadn’t known how badly he wanted her at the time. And maybe she had been just as full of longing and need as he had been.).  
  
“But I do appreciate the offer.” She could hear the soft, small uptick at the corner of his lips in his voice. “Hey, want to know what I’m looking at right now?”  
  
Pepper rolled her eyes and smiled. Here came the pitch. “What are you looking at Tony?”  
  
“I’m looking at a day full of glorious California sunshine, perfect convertible weather and waves that are just begging to be surfed. What’s outside your window?”  
  
Pepper sighed, already able to hear Tony’s gloating. “A day full of clouds and drizzle and the promise of the cold, wet winter that’s to come.”  
  
“Ouch. That sounds terrible. You really should come out here for a vacation. Hill’s told me you’ve been working 60 plus hours a week.”  
  
“Oh, so now you’re checking up on me?”  
  
“I am fully capable of being friends with a woman and not sleeping with her. When we talk, our common denominator just happens to be you.”  
  
“Uh-huh.” Pepper said flatly, clearly not believing him. “Either you’re lying about the not sleeping together part or your lying about the being friends part.”  
  
“Everyone has that friend that’s more like an overbearing wife that forbids you from doing anything fun and constantly yells at you for everything.” He paused, tone changing from lighthearted to something slightly more serious. “You really should come out here, Pepper.”  
  
And she wanted to. So badly. Because even after being on the East Coast for 2 years, she still had trouble dealing with an actual winter and the cultural differences between the two coasts. (Pepper was convinced that the reason that a vast number of New Yorkers didn’t drive wasn’t because it was hard to get anywhere with a car, but because people jaywalked out into the street without even looking most of the time. Her hands still trembled slightly every time she was forced to drive her own car into the city.) She missed being able to lie around on the beach not far from her condo between Christmas and New Year’s, to be able to get a truly authentic taco virtually anywhere or even just the simplicity of the sun generally being out more in L.A.  
  
“We’ll see. Maybe after the holidays.” .

* * *

Pepper knows that Tony knows that he has her. Or she thinks he does. She’s not sure whether its just coincidence or Tony’s doing that every morning she walks into the office, the digital TV behind the main receptionist’s desk is displaying the current weather in L.A. And it’s almost always sunny and warm and perfect. Except for when it’s downright hateful because it’s raining in New York and the temperature won’t crack forty that day but it also won’t snow either. She was determined to stick it out, though. She would not go running back to California just because Tony appeared to finally have his head on straight.  
  
He called or e-mailed about once a week and the e-mails were usually pictures of food from her favorite restaurants in L.A. She sent him back pictures of her and her co-workers out on the town and made sure that there was always at least one male in the picture. Because while Tony may gleefully be taunting and tempting her to come back to L.A., Pepper knew that Tony wanted much more than the tentative friendship developing between them. And she may or may not have been exacting her revenge by making Tony think that she was going through men like she went through underwear.  
  
Despite this, Pepper broke down first. Honestly, how could she compete with a breaking news report that Iron Man had been shot down somewhere over the South China Sea and was missing? Speculation ran rampant, covering everything from a suit malfunction to pirates shooting him down and everywhere in between. Without a word she left the office and phoned Rhodey on her way to JFK Airport. He wasn’t able to tell her anything, but he did heavily suggest that as soon as her flight got into LAX she head over to the house in Malibu.  
  
She got there just as Agents Coulson and Hill were leaving. Coulson gave her a curt nod and a polite “Miss Potts” while Maria looked like she was ready to throttle the next person she saw. Pepper stepped into Stark Mansion for the first time in almost three years. As waves of nostalgia washed over her, she steeled herself for the worst. Which, in a twisted way, was also a form of nostalgia. Nothing had changed since she last left. It was like a time capsule. So much so that Pepper was surprised when she came into the living room and found Tony taking a screwdriver to the Iron Man helmet and not sipping a Scotch and staring into the fire.  
  
“Tony?”  
  
Tony looked up from his work, surprised. “Pepper.”  
  
They held each other’s gazes for a moment before one corner of Tony’s mouth quirked up. “God, you look good.”  
  
Pepper blushed despite herself and cleared her throat. “I called Rhodey as soon as I heard. He told me to come here…I didn’t think you’d be back so soon.”  
  
“Yeah, well, what happened was kind of embarrassing really. So SHIELD decided to leak that I got shot down rather than say what really happened.”  
  
“Which was…?”  
  
“I can’t actually tell you because you no longer have top secret military clearance. I want to tell you, really, but I can’t.” He returned his attention to the helmet, tightening something with the screwdriver. “Pretty sure Hill’s got this place bugged and if she catches me telling you she will come in here and shove bamboo shoots underneath my fingernails. And before you say anything, I’ve seen them; she keeps them in a drawer in her office. So let’s just say it was something heroic and not at all dumb. Like JFK in _PT 109_.” He looked up and saw Pepper standing in the same spot. “Can you sit down please? You’re making me nervous because you’ve got this deer in the headlights thing going and…”  
  
Pepper obliged, taking a seat on the edge of the couch a few feet from Tony. Just as she opened her mouth to rib him about the latest e-mail he sent her, she caught proper sight of the helmet and felt herself go pale. “Is that….blood?”  
  
_Leave, leave, leave!_ Her mind screamed at her, the beginnings of panic seeping into her veins. _Get out while you still can! You can have a normal life. One without blood and state secrets and your heart flying around in a surprisingly fragile titanium gold alloy suit._  
  
Tony looked at the top of the helmet and sighed. “Yeah, fucker got me good.” He pulled the sleeve up on his shirt and rubbed at it with the heel of his palm. “Probably dried on by—” he stopped when he looked up and saw Pepper’s face. “It’s not mine. Really. I wouldn’t be sitting here if it was mine.”  
  
“Then whose is it?”  
  
“It’s—” Tony put the helmet down on the table and slouched back on the couch. “A bird.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“A bird. I hit a bird. Big one. An eagle or a vulture or something—”  
  
“A great frigatebird, to be precise,” Jarvis interrupted. “Otherwise known as—”  
  
“Yeah, got it, thanks buddy.” Tony send an exasperated glare at the ceiling before continuing. “Cracked my HUD and then its guts got into some of the intakes…basically, the same thing that happens to a jet engine when it sucks in a bird happened to me.”  
  
“You…were brought down by a bird strike?”  
  
“See, that makes it sound so much better. ‘Bird strike’. Like the bird actually had intent against me and I had to defend myself.”  
  
“Why didn’t Jarvis—”  
  
“Because sometimes a man just wants to enjoy the capabilities of his technologically advanced metal suit and not have to listen to annoying AIs nagging about negative G’s and migratory patterns of birds! Why is this apparently so hard for people to understand?”  
  
Pepper sat quietly and tried to process what was happening. Tony had crashed into some birds while goofing off in the suit over the ocean. All the stress and worry of the last 12 hours or so had been because Tony had been screwing around in his suit after a mission. Not because of terrorists or missiles or guns or insane egomaniacs. Just Tony…being Tony.  
  
“Oh my god, I can’t do this anymore.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I can’t, I can’t deal with this—”  
  
“Whoa, hey, slow down let’s not—”  
  
“—I tried, you know, I really did but I just—”  
  
“—I’m fine, really, I am! Look, Pep, just please don’t—”  
  
“—I even dyed my hair! I tried everything! I even—”  
  
“—never see me agai—wait, you dyed your hair? What did that—”  
  
“—come back sober and looking like sex—”  
  
“—pictures somewhere. Anyway, just please don’t cut me—”  
  
“—and it’s not working! It’s not! _It just isn’t_!”  
  
Silence hung heavy and thick in the air. After a long moment, Tony nodded. “Jarvis, book the next flight to New York for Miss Potts. First class.”  
  
Pepper blinked rapidly, feeling as if the entire world had tilted and then quickly righted itself. Why would he send her home after what she just said? “What?”  
  
“It’s what you want, isn’t it? To get as far away from me as possible? I’m many things, narcissistic…vain…obsessive…but mean isn’t one of them. Well, purposefully mean. If you want to go home, go home. I won’t stop you.”  
  
No…he didn’t think….Pepper groaned aloud in frustration, dropping her head into her hands. After a moment, she looked up at Tony again. “My god, you never listen do you! If you stopped enjoying the sound of your own voice for five seconds, you know that I just got done explaining to you how much I can’t leave you again!”  
  
Tony stared at her for a long moment, blinking. “…You _can’t_ leave me again?”  
  
“No. It was easy when you were drunk. You were a mess and an asshole and keeping you alive took up way too much of my time for something that wasn’t even close to being in my job description. But now you’ve…changed. And it seems to be for the better. When I walked in, I was really expecting you to be pouring scotch on a gash you were stitching together in between taking swigs directly from the bottle. But the obvious stashes are gone, all of the alcohol seems gone, even the decorative alcohol.”  
  
“Yeah, dad’s still rolling in his grave over the Dalmore 50 I flushed down the toilet.”  
  
“And that made dealing with Iron Man completely impossible. But now I realize that the only thing worse than getting a phone call from Rhodey or Jarvis in the middle of the night, is not getting that call. Being one of the last…and with no good reason for it…” Pepper shook her head. “I can’t. I just can’t.”  
  
“So what exactly are you saying?”  
  
“You know exactly what I’m saying.”  
  
“I’d really like to hear you say it, just so I can be 1000% sure we’re on the same page.” He scooted closer to her on the couch, cupping a hand around his ear.  
  
“I’m staying,” Pepper said and Tony’s face lit up in smug glee. Before he could say anything, she continued, “I’ve really missed L.A.’s weather. New York is miserable in the winter. I don’t think I’ve seen the sun in about two weeks and I’ve ruined about three pairs of Manolo’s on that vile black slush that snow turns into after two days.”  
  
“Right, the weather is what’s so terrible about New York.”  
  
Their knees were only a few inches apart now and Pepper watched as Tony’s eyes slowly traveled up her body before meeting hers. “Nothing at all to do with the four time zones between here, in Malibu, where I am, and New York, where you were stationed until about 20 seconds ago.”  
  
“Oh, you thought I was coming back for you?” She murmured, unable to keep her eyes from dropping down to his lips as they drifted closer together.  
  
“Well, I thought I’d at least be included as an extra perk.”  
  
Their lips met and Pepper felt a wave of relief wash over her. She felt as if she were finally coming home. She felt as if she was finally back where she should be, as if everything was finally back where it belonged. Tony’s tongue gently swiped at her lower lip and despite the thrill of pleasure it sent through her, she put a hand to his chest and gently pushed him away. “This doesn’t give you, or me, _carte blanche_ to pick up where we left off.”  
  
“Considering where we left off, that’s a great idea. …Or are you talking about where we left off in New York, because then—”  
  
“I’m serious, Tony. I’m not moving back in here; I’m going to go back to my old condo if it’s still available.”  
  
“And if it’s not available?” “I’ll find a new one. We’re starting over. Completely over.”  
  
Tony raised a brow. “You wanna go back to making 50k a year as a junior financial analyst? Seems a little extreme—”  
  
She slapped him on the shoulder with the back of her hand. “Stop being an ass. I’m serious.”  
  
“Ok, ok. Real talk.” He took hold of her hands and looked her in the eye. “I am willing to do whatever it takes to make this work this time. Seriously. Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. More meetings, surprise drug tests, whatever. Say ‘jump’ and the only question I will ask is ‘how high?’.”  
  
“Oh Tony,” she said, sliding a hand along his stubbly cheek to cup his face. “I don’t want you to do all that. I just want to be able to trust you.”  
  
She watched as Tony closed his eyes and leaned into her touch, covering her hand with his. “I promise. I promise, Pepper, I will do everything I possibly can to never break it again.”  
  
He never did. There were relapses and grievous bodily injuries and reckless behavior and threats against the world, but through it all, he never broke her trust again.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The Mercury Lounge is a real place you can go to and catch a show. Hopefully it will still be there post-Coronavirus.
> 
> 2\. Despite starting this in 2010, I only recently decided to see if Pepper could actually have a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. 65 Cranberry Street is my answer. Let's say it "only" cost $1 million dollars when Pepper bought it. 
> 
> 3\. In the summer of 2016, I actually got to sit in the spot where Pepper sits after her run in Central Park. It's a nice spot. Columbus Circle is also where Stark Tower is located in the comics. 
> 
> 4\. Dalmore 50 (1926) is a scotch whisky that was originally distilled in 1926 and left to age for 50 years before being bottled in the 70's. It's very old, very rare and regularly goes for tens of thousands of dollars when it comes up at auction. Howard Stark, if he could, would totally kill his son for flushing it down the toilet.


End file.
